The boater whose fiancee and 3-year-old daughter died after their boat capsized at the Dock Street dam last month said he didn't know the dam existed, according to authorities.

Cody Binkley, 26, of Palmyra, told rescuers he knew about the dam near Middletown, where he put his 16-foot flat-bottomed Jon boat in the water in the dark on May 7, but not the deceptively powerful low-head dam farther north in Harrisburg.

He had planned to take his family fishing and camping. But instead the trip ended in tragedy after he crashed into the dam on the way to his destination along the Susquehanna River.

Low-head dams are known as "drowning machines," because they create violent churning water that overturns boats and traps its victims. The dams can be nearly inescapable if water levels and conditions are right.

Despite this danger, the warnings posted near the Dock Street Dam in Harrisburg, particularly on the downstream side where Binkley approached, can be easily missed.

The only signs visible from the water are faded signs posted at the top of the stone piers on the Interstate 83 bridge. They are not illuminated at night and there are no warning buoys in the water.

After the recent deaths, city officials are exploring options to boost signage and awareness of the dam, said Mayor Eric Papenfuse.

PennLive confirmed with the state Fish and Boat Commission that the city is out of compliance with a law passed in 1998 for run-of-the-river dams, which require signs on both shores on both sides of a dam.

Those signs are missing from the Dock Street Dam, likely taken out by jagged chunks of ice that clog the river each year.

While those signs may not have helped Binkley, who was approaching from the water, city officials are exploring alternative methods beyond what is required by the law, including illuminating the existing signs above the water or adding flashing red lights on the I- 83 bridge.

The fatal accident May 7 was recorded by a video surveillance camera posted on a nearby government building, providing vital insight into how the tragedy occurred. The case is still being reviewed by the Dauphin County prosecutor's office.

The video showed Binkley's boat approaching the dam under the bridge, according to Frank Egresitz, chief of Harrisburg's River Rescue. The boat then stopped at the edge of the boil line, indicating Binkley had either heard the water rushing over the dam or detected something out of the ordinary.

Binkley could not be reached for an interview and his mother declined an interview.

After pausing for several seconds, Binkley's boat turned right, and then appeared to make a hard left directly toward the dam, Egresitz said.

The boat crashed head-on into the 4-foot concrete dam, creating an impact that threw Binkley's daughter Madelyn and the family dog into the water above the dam.

Binkley and his fiance, Mary Bredbenner, were tossed into the water below the dam as the boat capsized.

Binkley managed to swim to shore near the PennDOT building, which is where rescuers initially concentrated their search. Rescuers later found the boat still churning in the water near the Dock Street Dam.

In the days after the accident, River Rescue volunteers retrieved an adult and child's life jacket from the dam, still rotating in the water.

Journal of Dam Safety

While the state's Dam Act, known as Act 91, requires warning buoys on both sides of hazardous low-head dams, the Dock Street Dam only has buoys on the upstream side. And those buoys were placed on the water June 2, weeks after many boaters already had started using the river.

The buoys could not have placed any sooner in the season, city officials said, because the water levels were too high and the buoys would have simply been carried away.

City officials believe they were granted an exception to having buoys on the downstream side of the dam because the I-83 bridge is in the way of where the buoys would need to be placed.

The buoys would either have to be placed too close or too far from the dam, Papenfuse said. The law requires buoys to be within 100 feet of a dam downstream.

The signs on the I-83 bridge, which go beyond what is required by law, were intended to make up for the lack of buoys downstream, Papenfuse said.

City officials already are preparing to buy four new double-sided signs that can be added to the shorelines to comply with Act 91. City officials are working to determine a location that could protect the signs from flooding and ice chunks to ensure they stay in place.

"We've always wanted to do what's required," Papenfuse said. "We want the area to be safe."

While state officials are supposed to inspect dams every three years to ensure they are complying with Act 91, the Harrisburg dam was last checked in 2013.

It was found to be out-of-compliance at that time, according to Lt. Col. Thomas Burrell with the Fish and Boat Commission, but city officials quickly resolved any issues.

Inspectors have not returned to the site since because of information technology problems that made it impossible to pull or add data to their database. That means the Harrisburg dam was not inspected as it normally would have been in 2016.

All dams across the state are to be inspected this year, Burrell said.

Many other low-head dams across the state have been removed over the years because of concerns about their safety and environmental impacts.

Other dams have added improvements, including the dam in Shamokin Dam, Pa., where they built an inflatable dam in 1969 to replace the old low-head dam.

There now are large pillars that protrude from the water, making the dam more noticeable from afar from both directions. There has not been a fatality at the dam since the upgrade.

As it stands, 46 percent of the documented fatalities across the country at low-head dams have occurred in five states: Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota, Ohio and Pennsylvania, according to research by the late Bruce A. Tschantz, with the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.

A recently-formed committee, including local representatives, is picking up where Tschantz' research left off to improve education about the danger of low-head dams.

Of significant concern are the growing populations near these structures and the increasing water recreation, said Paul Schweiger, vice president of Gannett Fleming in Camp Hill, who is helping to lead the continued research. The group is creating a website to better track deaths and close calls at dams, as no one currently tracks them effectively.

"I believe if the actual number of deaths were known, people would be dumbfounded," Schweiger said. "When something like that happens, people think it can't be prevented but these should be avoidable deaths."

Egresitz said boaters should not put their boats in unfamiliar water and people on boats should wear life vests. He also advised boaters who launch from City Island to head north first, to ensure everything is working properly with the boat, instead of south, which would put them on a path to the dam.